Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Lawsuit accused environmental group of discrimination

An environmental group opposed to public lands grazing was accused of
age discrimination by a former employee who has since dismissed the
lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed against the Western Watersheds
Project, which has fought multiple legal fights over grazing, by Mary K.
Fite, the nonprofit group’s former biodiversity director.

She voluntarily dismissed the case without prejudice, allowing it to be revived, within a day after filing it.

Capital
Press was unable to reach an attorney for Fite as of press time and
Western Watersheds Project is not commenting on the lawsuit.

Fite
alleged that she was fired in violation of federal and state
anti-discrimination laws by the environmental group in early 2015 at the
age of 60 after previously being demoted and having her pay reduced.

The
complaint claimed that Fite’s problems began after the Western
Watersheds Project, which is headquartered in Hailey, Idaho, hired
Travis Bruner as executive director in 2014. The group’s previous chief,
Jon Marvel, had retired the previous year.

Fite alleged that one
of the group’s directors told another employee they were seeking to
“make the organization younger,” and that at least three employees over
50 years old were terminated under Bruner.